A Girl They Called Shadow
by love2write1409
Summary: Galathea Stone, 23, is Shadow and because of her power to adapt to every background like a chameleon, she is one of Magneto's most important allies. Grown up with only mutants around her and hunted by her dark past, she isn't really sure about her own self. When she fidns out about Magneto's plans for her and finds herself in a fight with Sabretooth, she flees to join the X-Men ...
1. Bad Start

_(Hello readers out there :) I'm new on this page and this is my first fanfiction and it's been translated from German to English! I really hope you like it, you'll find the original one here: .de/s/52d3630e00031a142c0de6c0/1/A-girl-they-called-Shadow _

_I'd love to get some review on it!_

_Thanks a lot, Annika :) )_

**Chapter 1: Bad Start**

The rain rolled off my skin as I slowly, step by step, walked towards the gate of the huge building, that reminded me more of a fancy mansion than a school. Even though I knew that most eyes wouldn't notice me, I checked carefully for people on the street and that every single one of my steps was well thought and quiet.

There it was, the sign.

Xavier's school for gifted youngsters.

I took a look over my shoulder before I let go of my camouflage. Then I pressed the doorbell. I suddenly felt so … normal.

A little while later the gate opened and an elderly man in a wheelchair appeared right in front of me. Without saying a word, he signalized me to follow him.

On the way to his office which I found incredibly long I tried not to wonder about him opening me the door personally or that he probably already knew about everything that had happened. How that complete idiot of a helping hand of Lensherr had put his claws to my neck. How I had lost my left middle finger. Ironic actually, if you thought about it, I mean, it had been my favorite weapon against him. But still I doubted, that that was his reason for biting it off.

I glanced at the wooden wainscoting on the walls, then at the bandage on my hand. The blood had soaked it again and dried at the sides, hard and dark. Screw that.

A door to my left opened and the man leading the way steered his vehicle through, before I was able to follow him, as inconspicious as possible. Which wasn't hard at all for me, camouflage was my „gift".

The room was bigger on the inside than it seemed from the outside. In front of the back wall which was made out of glass there was a desk with skyscraper-like piles of folders, sheets and pencils, but they were neatly put in place. On the left side of the desk there was a chalk board, green, like they apparently had them in schools, and on it there were some long physical functions that I didn't understand. The high bookshelves hardly casted any shadows into the light room, which made the tidy office look a lot more friendly.

We weren't alone. In front of the desk, there were three people standing, even though I have to admit, one was more leaning against the desk chewing gum, while the other two just stood there with their arms crossed.

The guy in the wheelchair looked at me, his face in deep thought. I tried to kick out all the emotions, that Erik Lensherr had tried to teach me about him, out of my head, but it didn't really work the way I wanted it to. With his bald head and the hooked nose that stood in contrast to his kind eyes he reminded me of my grandfather – or at least the guy who one had introduced to me as my grandfather. God knows who the guy had actually been, but I liked him.

Professor Xavier can read people's minds, I reminded myself. That's what he was probably doing right now. I forced myself to look at something else, so I looked at the people standing behind him. It was weird how I already knew two of them, even though we had never met in person. How small the world is, an ironic voice in my head mocked, and it sounded far more brave than I actually was.

Cyclops was wearing his sunglasses as usual, but I knew that he was examining me from top to bottom. A bit anxious I pulled my leather jacket down. The man to the professor's right grinned. Wolverine wore a similar jacket, and the way he was standing a bit further away from Cyclops, Xavier and the dark-haired teenage girl, I thought he might not get along with them too well. Our looks crossed, but instead of the smile I had hoped for, he gave me a killing look with his eyes. How lovely that that was only a saying.

Maybe my decision hadn't been so well?

These disfavoring looks were just cruel.

„Chameleon?"

I shivered as I heard the both friendly and pejorative voice of the professor.

„I'm calling myself Shadow now.", I explained as calm as possible. „Like it better."

„Magneto called you Chameleon."

Watch your words, Gal! „Chameleon is dead.", I answered shortly. „And Shadow has risen from the ashes. I'm here voluntarily, if that's what you want to know. I haven't been sent."

„So you're not talking nice about my old friend.", the professor commented, quietly grinning, and I wasn't sure if he wanted an answer or not.

„There were incidences.", I said, just to make sure. „I'm not fighting for him anymore."

„Not for us either." I turned my head and saw Cyclops, one eyebrow pulled up.

„I don't have to fight for you. I could wait outside until -"

„Calm down, kids." Xavier appeasingly lifted his hands.

„It's a once in a lifetime situation, but I have to agree with you.", I heard Wolverine say to Cyclops. „You don't belong here." The last part was for me.

Before I had to bite my tongue not to make a mean comment, the professor interrupted us again. „Stop it, Logan!" Okay. So Wolverine's actual name was Logan. „It would be better if the three of you left now."

If Cyclops wouldn't have worn his glasses, he would have rolled his eyes, visible for everyone. But this way he only sighed.

„So, Wolverine and Cylops.", I said as the three had left the room, the girl, amazingly, _through_ the door. At least I knew her mutation now. „Why were they here?"

„You don't feel comfortable when there's other people around, do you?", the professor asked instead of answering my questions. I hated if people did that.

„Obviously."  
>„Why?"<br>„Why were the two of them here? And the girl?"

„Logan and Scott informed me about the thing with Sabretooth and Kitty … Well, it's hard to get rid of her, I guess." He smiled. My face stayed frozen. There had to be something wrong about him being so open and polite.

„And what are you going to do with me now? Do you have some kind of mutant prison vor Magneto's helpers in your school?"

„God, no. I'd love to keep you here, but not against your will. You may leave if you want, but it seemed to me like you were thinking about changing sides."

„I already did.", I said quickly. „Mentally, I mean. The way I think ..."

„Good." I nodded. „I'll give you a room then, but I'll keep an eye on you. You worked together with Erik Lensherr for six years, you never know. Please don't take it the wrong way."

I shook my head no, but inside, I sighed. Still, Xavier constantly having an eye on me was better than everything Magneto had wanted to do to me. „I thank you." And I really did. To me it seemed like I had really changed the past few days, that I had fled. Last week Cyclops – or Scott, like the professor called him – would have deeply regretted his deprecation towards me. I knew people who had already been in a fight with him, so I knew, that he hardly ever took off his glasses, making him a lot less dangerous. Logan would have been the bigger problem, but not even he could fight something he couldn't see. But here and now I was able to stop my aggressions and it made me proud, even though I felt a bit like a one-man-selfhelping-group.

_I was able to feel his breath in my back and smell the rotten smell that he excreted even before I saw him. I turned around, getting a bit of my hair in my face and making me blind for a second. There he was, standing in front of me, not shaved at all, with long hair and pitch black eyes, smiling at me like a wild animal on the hunt._

„_What do you want?", I asked with a cold voice, trying to sound as bored as possible, but also arrogant, if you look at it._

„_Magneto is ready." His voice made me shake every time, possibly because he spoke so rarely._

„_I won't come."_

„_Oh yes, you will."_

„_No." My voice sounded even harder and certain, than it did in my head._

„_Don't be that chippy, princess.", he grinned and I shivered again, as he opened his mouth for an even bigger smile, showing all his sharp teeth …_

I woke up from my sleep. With one of the many pillows I rubbed off the sweat from my forehead, whilst my other hand was trying to find the light switch, panicking.

„You're safe. You're here. Safe.", I wispered the moment the lights went on.

My room looked friendly, even now in the middle of the night and with closed curtains. In the past I had hated comfortable rooms like this one, because they change the way of looking at things that might still happen here. Paint a room black and if someone gets murdered it's not as bad, because everyone expected it to happen anyways.

But this room I loved. I needed the difference. And after all the panicking during the past few days this room looked more inviting than everything else. No dark corners in which Magneto's warriors could hide, just a simple, squared bedroom with a huge bed, a full bookshelf and a table with two chairs. Perfect.

I turned off the lights again. The horrible pictures in front of my inner eye came back almost immidiately.

_Sabretooth opened his mouth to laugh hysterically. My dead finger fell out from between his teeth and I rolled to the side to avoid it, while I was still screaming in pain and staring at the bleeding wound on my left hand._

Stop! Lights on!

I started murmuring it like a mantra. „You're safe, there's no one there. You're safe, there's no one there. You're safe ..."

I never had wasted a second to the thought, that out of all people Sabretooth would be the one making me be so scared. I mean, I always thought of him as an idiot, stupid and absolutely predictable. An easy opponent.

The volume of my scared and heavy breathing amazed me. I had never heard myself breathe so fast and loud. Still shaking I got out of the bed. The carpet felt nice and fluffy under my feet as I walked over to the bookshelf. I looked at the titles.

Whoever had lived here before me, it had clearly been a student, easily to figure out by noticing that almost all of the books were teenager's novels or fantasy stories.

But at the bottom I found something I liked more, old classics. Tolkien, Dickens, Lewis, Baum … the list was endless.

I ran over the dusty backs of the books with my index finger. It felt nice. Lensherr once said, that subconscious déjà-vus were safe signs to find out something about one's past. I didn't know much about the time before Magneto. Too many lies, that my alleged mother had told me, causing me to move further away from my true personality. The stronger I tried concentrating on the books, the more my hate I felt towards that woman went away. Maybe I had liked to read in the past? I hadn't touched a book in years.

I pulled out _Oliver Twist_. It was famous, that I knew, and dark, but I hadn't read it.

I walked back to my bed, opened the first page and let myself get caught in the story.


	2. How Not To Make Friends

**Chapter 2: How not to make friends**

I picked up the issue of _Oliver Twist_ that was laying on the floor next to my dirty boots.

A little absent I pulled the itchy nightgown that the professor had given me over my head and walked over to the bathroom.

The colorful tiles on the wall formed a mosaic with fighting scenes between different mutants, which I found somehow nice but also sad. Did the architect of this bathroom divine that there would be a mutant war starting shortly? Or had it only been an interesting thought for him? I guessed that the house was built before Xavier and Magneto started fighting. I looked at the insect-like antennae and kraken-tentacles of two fighting mutants while taking off my underwear. It was hard to force myself to stop studying the pictures and take a step into the shower, but when the warm water started to run all over my body, I felt a sudden happiness. My first shower in over a week. I almost used all of the soap and the bottle of shampoo that one had given to me. I watched how the water to my feet changed color, from black and red to clear again, then I realized that the whole shower smelled like lemon and I felt clean again.

A towel tied up around my body, I let water into the sink, threw in my clothes and filled it up with the rest of the liquid soap. My jeans had gotten hard from all the dirt and I was still able to smell my stinking t-shirt when I held my breath.

I put on my last clean piece of clothing – a pair of pink socks, that I already hated just for their color – and stepped outside in the hallway, pressing the towel to my chest.

So. Where was I going to get clothes from?

Gal, whatever you're doing right now, it's completely stupid!, a voice in my head informed me, and one, that sounded more like me, replied: You're probably dead real soon anyways.

True, actually. I was really wondering about them giving me shelter instead of locking me up. After all I had been one of Magneto's best allies over all these years (which I wasn't proud of, now that I knew what he had planned for me!).

A walked down the hallway a few meters and knocked on a door, that didn't have a door knob on the outside, but probably one on the inside because I could see the end of a screw. I guessed that it was the room of the girl who could go through walls.

„What?" Her answer sounded pretty much as annoyed as I felt. „Bobby, if that's you, it's not funny to knock on other people's doors that early in the morning!"

„This isn't Bobby.", I sighed. Nailed it. Somehow my idea of lending clothes from someone else looked pretty damn stupid to me now.

„Who is it then? Rogue?"

„Shadow."

It got quiet and a moment later she stepped through the door. What was her name again? Kathy? No, Kitty was what the professor had called her.

Her facial expression changed fast, lucky me, from angry to amused, as she saw me in my towel.

„What are you doing here?"

„I need something to wear.", I admitted. „My clothes haven't been washed in a week and it -"

„Yeah, got it." She said bored. „Wait here."

She came back a little while later with a pile of dark clothes. „Wear this." She handed me the pile, but when I thanked her as polite as possible, she only waved in the direction of my door and walked back into her room backwards.

Nice view of hospitality, I guess.

Other than I expected, the tight suit fit me perfectly. It was close-fitting, even on my skinny arms and legs, and had a red and black X-sign sewed to the chest. X-Men. Was I even allowed to wear this? A bit insecure I put on my leather jacket on top and also my combat boots, picked up my book and left my room again, to explore the school.

The corridors seemed endless, long, to me, with a vast number of doors, and for a while everything looked the same. It reminded me of the old mansion somewhere in Europe that I had spent most of my childhood in, the walls dark brown with a lamp or a painting occasionally. I would have bet all of my little lethal injections that I hid inside my shoes that there were secret passages behind these paintings somewhere.

But after turning left a couple of times I stood in front of a big and really strong-looking metal door, that opened all by itself like the glass doors in shopping malls, as I stepped closer towards them. It led me into a small chamber with a few buttons, but before I was able to read the tiny writing on them, the elevator already started taking me downstairs.

When I left it, I found myself in a long corridor again, but this one was underground and seemed to be built from pure metal. To my right and to my left there were little corners in the walls, the whole hallway had the shape of a hexagon.

I took a few steps and held my breath when I heard, that my steps set free clear sounds, and that even though I wasn't even wearing heels.

I heard slow, departing steps.

I put up my camouflage like a shield, changed all my cells into adaption of my surrounding. Only milliseconds later every small part of my body had the color and structure of the metal wall to my left. Even the book that I had taken with me to read somewhere, looked like a little chameleon.

_„__Chameleon!"_

_„__I am coming, mother!" I jumped from the swing and landed ungentle in the hot sand. On my way inside I grabbed my shoes._

_The door of the old wooden villa creaked a bit when I turned the door knob and opened it. On the other side of the hallway where there was the door to the kitchen, I could see my mom's dress swinging around, like always when she had passionate arguments with someone. As quiet as possible I closed the door behind me and took a few steps closer to the kitchen to listen._

_„__If you continue calling her by her mutant name, soon everyone is going to know, what we are, Kayla!" The male voice sounded raspy._

_„__So?" My mom. „Chameleon on her own would be stronger than the whole neighborhood combined!"_

_„__We have to be careful! People don't like things like this!"_

_„__Mutants are better than them, and you know that, Erik!"_

_„__But I need my mutants alive!" Erik Lensherr almost yelled that last part. „And you are strong!"_

As fast as the memory had come, as fast it was gone again. I had been si years old when I me Magneto for the first time. Kayla Stone, a telepath with the speciality to change someone's mood, had introduced him to me. At that point I had been completely sure of her being my mother. I didn't waste a thought to the fact, that about half an hour after this conversation half of the street had blown up and Kayla and I had been forced to move from Tallahassee to Cardiff. After all it had been my decision to come back to the States ten years later and join the Brotherhood, Magneto's mutant army. And I was a survivor of the little street fight, so what more would I want?

I just continued walking down the metal corridor, as close to the wall as possible because that made my mutation stronger. After about a hundred meters another door appeared on the other side of the hallway, which opened as if it had felt my presence. But I was wrong, a woman with short red hair that I had never seen before walked out, followed by Charles Xavier. They walked next to each other silent, but from a past conversation with Magneto I knew that the exerted look on the professor's face meant that he was talking to someone through the use of telepathy – and that he was able to hear all the thoughts of present people in that state, without being able to shut it down.

Fuck.

I covered my mouth with my hand to stop me from mumuring, simultaneous with the red-haired woman turning around and lookd exactly in my direction.

I forced myself to stay calm and put up the level of my camouflage, because I knew by experience that after a while of staring at me I was able to see, especially by telepath-mutants.

„Is it her?" The professor looked at the woman.

„She's standing around her somewhere, thinking we couldn't find her.", was the growling answer. I guessed that they weren't saying these sentences in their thoughts so Iwas able to hear them, probably so I would become scared.

„Right." The blood in my veins froze as the woman answered my indirekt, though question. „Come on, show yourself."

„Jean, we don't want to read other people's minds." Professor Xavier put his tie into place. „Leave her. She can't get into the laboratories, that's for sure."

„True." Like in timelapse Jean turned back around to the professor. She was noticeable disappointed.

„Let's go. She'll find her way out alone." I felt a clicking in my head and the picture of the professor giving me a wink appeared in front of my inner eye. I shivered. So that was what telepathic communication looked like?

I only changed back into my normal, visible form when I got off the elevater on the first floor, wanting to leave the lab corridor as fast as I was able to.


	3. Nightcrawler's Return

**Chapter 3: Nightcrawler's return**

Here in the mansion they always spoke of me in the third person, or even better, of „her", not caring if I was present or not, that's what I noticed the next days.

If someone had seen her (Sorry, but that's like the worst joke I've ever heard!).

If they could trust her.

If someone had spoken to her.

Or, best one: How much news Magneto found out about the X-Men now.

This egocentric bunch of complete idiots. Possibly none of them had ever made any mistakes. Well I admit, joining Magneto _had_ been pretty bad if I thought about it now, but how should Charles Xavier and his mutants ever find out about me and answer all their questions if none of them spoke to me? Or even thought about it?

Well, I actually had had a few conversations, but they had either been cold and unfriendly (with that horrible bitch Jean Grey) or with my reflection in the mirror about what I did with all of my spare time here.

Reading child book classics.

The whole fucking day long.

When I was done with _Oliver Twist_ I started _Anne of Green Gables_, then _Moby Dick_, worked my way through _Alice in Wonderland_, _The Wizard of Oz_ and _The Hobbit_. But after one and a half weeks of constant reading, when the last thing I held in my hands was _Winnie-the-Pooh_, I was close to having another one of my good old rage eruptions, during my time with Magneto probably the only state in which I could have gotten quite dangerous for Sabretooth.

Fine, I was safe in this school, but I was too old to attend the actual classes or at least it seemed embarrasing to ask the professor about it.

I needed an adventure, or at least a bit of difference!

I got it on my nineteenth day in the mansion in the form of a mental call to all the mutants in the institute that had already come off age, also reaching me.

_Nightcrawler is back. Come to my office._

I had no idiea who or what that Nightcrawler was, but I predicted him to be a mutant that had been on a mission somewhere and had to be welcomed now. I just didn't understand what role I was to play in there.

Of course, I had two theories, but one was unlikely, the other one virtually inhumane.

Either the X-Men trusted me now or they wanted to exhibit me in front of others of their kind like a piece of meat.

I walked into the professors office squeezed in between Wolverine, the only one who looked at me from time to time, and Storm, that I had only talked once to to date, and that conversation laid back three years now and we had been chained to a wall after a clash with a mutant hunter, so we had been in more or less the same predicament. That's why I believed that her opinion of me wasn't too negative. Probably not positive either, but neutral like that, she was way better than the rest.

It was the first time I saw all the mutants of the X-Men in one room.

Jean Grey and Scott Summers a.k.a. Cyclops stood next to the board, hand in hand. They both gave me unfriendly looks when I glanced at them for a second, which I would have loved to answer with a sticked out tongue, but with 23 years of age I found that a but _too_ childish (even though they weren't acting more grown up either!).

To Scott's left there was a man in his early thirties, leaning to the desk in a kind of casual way, who was having a coolness competition with Logan, or at least that was what it looked like. His dark hair was mostly falling into his face, even though he had tried to repress it into a ponytail with a ribbon in the back of his head. He was wearing a brown cloak with long arms, that reached him to his ancles. He was spinning around a deck of cards in his hands. He was French (I guess …) and his name was Remy LeBeau, as a mutant Gambit. He lived close to Xavier's school and showed up here once in a while, apart from that he apparently spent loads of time in close-by casinos and fooled people out of their money by using his powers. I didn't know what his actual mutation was, but I did know that he liked poker cards to play a role in using them. To be honest, I dound him really interesting and attractive, but he had this look he liked to give everyone, that made me nervous and that felt like thousands of little electric shocks everywhere on my body.

Storm was standing next to him. Her white hair was perfectly straight like always and she herself was standing straight like a stick, struggling with represent her role model function, which she had for the students as a teacher, also when she was with the other mutants.

With a hand gesture she told me to sit down on the chair next to her. I followed her silent request and sat down, in a perfect angle to watch Logan who was standing next to the door smoking his cigar, giving Gambit cold looks, but at the same time watching the professor who was sitting in his wheelchair in the middle of the half circle of grown up mutants.

Something inside me was really curious about the new guy – or should I say, the guy coming back? – but on the other hand I was sure that he wasn't different from all the others in this room, so I wasn't missing anythings in the time he wasn't here.

The creepiest thing about him was, that he made us wait for a long time and we were all just silent.

But then …

I jerked.

Right next to me a tall man suddenly appeared out of nothing, leaving a cloud of dark blue fog.

My heart was still beating faster than usual, when he walked towards the professor with an elegant walk and friendly shook his hand. I only realized now that something was wrong with him. He was a mutant obviously, and furthermore a teleporter, but he seemed to be not even _human_.

He indeed had the figure of a normal slim young man, but on the height of his tailbone, he _had_ a tail, a long and dark blue one that ended in seomething that looked like an arrow. His skin seemed to be blue, that's what I gathered from the color of his tail and the hand, that was shaking the professor's. And as if that wasn't enough, that hand only had three fingers, two normal ines and a thumb, all of them fat and round.

I shuddered again when he turned around to greet the other X-Men standing around me. His face wasn't disfigured, the small scars that were writing signs into his face gave him something mystic and made him just as attractive as I found Logan and Remy LeBeau privily, but his eyes were yellow and his teeth sharp. And there was something about him that made me have a lot of respect for him. Maybe it was the fact that he looked like I imagined a demon to look like?

The suit and the pretty shoes he was wearing really didn't go with that warrior-look.

He said a few words to Storm and he others and I was suprised how clear and friendly his voice sounded, even though he had a slight accent, German perhaps.. But what surprised me even more – and the others as well – was that he nodded to me before he left the room.


End file.
